SALEM – If only you could rev up the sleek, robin's egg blue Avanti Studebaker parked in the lobby of the Peabody Essex Museum and cruise through the new exhibit, "California Design, 1930-65: Living in a Modern Way.''

That'd be a cool way to revisit the not-so-distant Golden State of futuristic architecture and modernist furniture, kidney-shaped swimming pools and Chet Baker playing jazz on the radio.

Really, it's just as much fun to wander through the Special Exhibitions Gallery where the walls have been replaced with glass partitions like those stilt houses with spacious patios overlooking the starlit desert.

Organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and making its only East Coast stop in Salem, this visually dazzling exhibit represents the first major study of modern California Design.

The era's exemplary creative couple, the Eameses invested utilitarian elegance in furniture, fine art and film, graphic design and their namesake Eames House, built on a cliff overlooking the Pacific and constructed entirely of pre-fab steel parts intended for industrial use.

For anyone born right after World War II, viewing this show is a time trip through an era when – in Wallace Stegner's words - "California is America, only more so.''

By showcasing more than 250 mid-century modern design objects, it evokes a specific place, time and a California state-of-mind where everything was new and shiny and cooler than anywhere else.

Digging deeper than surface glitter, "California Design'' is a meticulously researched examination of how postwar American prosperity provided a wealth of opportunities for innovative, often émigré artists to create a bold, new aesthetic that ended up shaping national tastes.

While the show has its roots in the Depression, classic "California Design'' seems to have been born in the fortuitous confluence of the still available open spaces that encouraged new kinds of architecture, the dual influence of Spanish and Asian styles and a mobile population receptive to change.

Sometimes the humblest object reveal the most. An aluminum and chrome-plated ice gun from 1935 to shoot crushed ice into a waiting glass reveals designers experimenting with the aerodynamic shapes that were becoming fashionable in automobile and airplane design.

As adapted for the PEM by Austen Barron Bailly, the museum's first curator of American Art, it's a spacious romp through 35 years of a style revolution when, she said, "The goal was to provide well-designed, accessible and affordable modern homes and furnishings to millions of Californians and those around the country who craved them.''

"The designers who embraced California modern ideals wanted to make everyday life beautiful and comfortable,'' she said. "They responded to California's environment and pioneered new ways to meld craft production with industrial manufacturing.''

Page 2 of 2 - Organized into four thematic sections – "Shaping," "Making," "Living" and "Selling" – this fun and accessible show reveals the origins of modern California Design through its materials and makers and provides movie clips, magazines, autos and the first Barbie and Ken dolls to show how its look and lifestyle spread around the world.

Early in the exhibit's "Making" section, visitors will see the impact of World War II utilitarian technology in the evocatively-named Swoon Suit, a woman's bathing suit from 1942 that satisfied government restrictions on rubber use, made by a company that manufactured parachutes.

Bailly observed the heyday of California's inspired design ended around 1965 about the time events like the Watts riots and the Free Speech Movement protests at the University of California, Berkley, tarnished the state's golden image and signaled the era's coming end.

The seeds for its decline had been sown as early as the late 1950s when Peter Voulkos "broke the conventions of the designer-craftsman movement'' to consider his ceramic work fine art and not a functional craft.

One of the age's final icons visitors will see is John Van Hamersveld's color-saturated poster for the 1963 movie, "The Endless Summer.''

While the poster's fluorescent sunset sent a generation of surfer dudes chasing the next horizon, it might suggest that "California Design'' also had its day in the sun but never went away.

Chris Bergeron is a Daily News staff writer. Contact him at cbergeron@wickedlocal.com or 508-626-4448508-626-4448. Follow us on Twitter @WickedLocalArts and on Facebook.